Because the Son of God became a visible man, he can be depicted; the honor given to an icon passes to the person it represents, while worship belongs to God alone.
The Old Testament forbids idols, but it does not forbid every sacred image: God himself commanded the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant and on the curtains of the tabernacle, and Solomon decorated the temple with carved figures (Exo 25:18–22; 1Kg 6:29–35). The difference lies in who established the image, what it represents, how it is treated and with what intention. The bronze serpent, made at God’s command, became an idol only when the people began to worship it, and it had to be destroyed (2Kg 18:4).
In the New Covenant, the decisive fact is the Incarnation. The invisible God has made himself visible: “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Joh 1:14), and Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). What has been seen can be depicted, and to refuse to depict Christ would be to doubt that he truly became man. For this reason, the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 787) affirmed the veneration of icons of Christ, of the Theotokos, of the angels and of the saints.
The Council distinguished carefully between worship (latreia), which belongs to God alone, and honor or veneration (proskynēsis), which may be shown to holy persons and holy things. When we kiss an icon, as we would kiss a photograph of someone we love, the honor passes, in St Basil’s words, “to the prototype,” the person represented. An icon is therefore a confession of faith “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phi 2:11).
Sources
Catechism, Q517-Q520; Study: The Theology of the Icon and the Holy Trinity. Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787), Definition. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 18.45.
